A Wall is Also a Road: Slime Molds, Pompeii and Alien Academics in Annalee Newitz’s Genre-Bending Science Fiction

Podcast Summary

Science Quickly host Rachel Feltman chats with journalist and author Annalee Newitz about the novel A Wall is Also a Road. The conversation explores how the book blends nonfiction science writing, archaeology, and speculative fiction, featuring a slime mold grad student as the point of view character and Pompeii as a dynamic backdrop for encounters with alien scholars. Newitz discusses balancing rigorous science with imaginative storytelling and the central idea that different forms of life might perceive reality very differently, while still exploring universal human experiences like dissertation stress and scholarly ambition.

• Non-human consciousness as narrative perspective and fieldwork in Rome.
• Earthbound archaeology and ancient Roman life as storytelling anchors.
• Guardrails of science used to shape fictional worlds without breaking plausibility.
• Themes of curiosity and empathy across radically different organisms.

Overview

The podcast features a wide-ranging chat with Annalee Newitz about their latest book, A Wall is Also a Road, a story that threads slime mold biology, ancient Rome, and extraterrestrial academics into a single narrative. Feltman highlights Newitz’s background as a science writer and how that informs a novel that feels both scientifically grounded and creatively ambitious. The author traces how the idea grew out of nonfiction work on Pompeii, including the lives of ordinary Pompeians and the famous Lupinar brothel graffiti left by a courtesan named Myrtis. From there, Newitz builds Garden Path, a single-celled slime mold in grad school orbiting a floating university outside our galaxy, who studies Earthly life through a truly alien lens.

Science and Worldbuilding

Newitz describes slime molds as protists that exhibit unconventional intelligence and problem solving, such as maze navigation and network optimization. In the book, Garden Path communicates via cellular signaling, blending romance, philosophy, and emotion through receptors on membranes. The podcast also delves into the worldbuilding logic, including the circumgalactic medium as the slime molds’ habitat, where they imagine resources like water and metals existing beyond single planets. Newitz emphasizes using hard science as a guardrail to ground the fictional exploration, while acknowledging the vast unknowns where science fiction can fill gaps with plausible speculation.

Characters and Cultural Collision

The narrative juxtaposes an alien grad student with Pompeii’s human characters, including Mirtis the enduringly remembered sex worker whose graffiti informs the story’s emotional core. The discussion addresses how archaeology and ancient civilizations can feel alien themselves to readers and scholars who study them, and how cross-cultural contact can illuminate both worlds. Garden Path’s perspective as a nonhuman consciousness forces readers to confront what normal means, and to consider how consciousness and cognition might diverge across life forms yet share universal pressures like pursuing a dissertation and fitting into social structures.

Balancing Fact and Fiction

The guest describes the process of engaging with scientists to keep science authentic while leaving room for imaginative leaps. Newitz consulted cosmologists about the circumgalactic medium and used those conversations to craft the slime molds’ resource environment. The guardrails described include sticking to credible physics while leaving space for speculative biology and alien psychology. The discussion also touches on the limits of journalism in fiction and how the author uses real-world science to inform a narrative that remains adventurous and thought-provoking.

Themes and Takeaways

Beyond the adventure, the talk emphasizes themes of curiosity, openness to radically different forms of life, and the idea that understanding can arise from empathizing with others, human or not. The conversation closes with reflections on why imagining consciousness beyond human experience matters for science, culture, and the way audiences engage with complex topics.

Conclusion

Feltman and Newitz celebrate the blend of science and storytelling and encourage listeners to explore the book for its thoughtful fusion of archaeology, biology, and speculative cosmology.